JetBrains has concluded the third IntelliJ IDEAL Plugin Contest — an annual event where Java developers from all around the world compete for their share of bounty prizes of over $65,000 in cash and software licenses.

This year’s event attracted many talented Java developers from over 20 countries, with both experienced IntelliJ IDEA plugin authors and newcomers giving it their best shot. The contest results are more than satisfying: the IntelliJ IDEA plugin repository is now 30+ plugins richer, with many new interesting and useful features and improvements introduced to this IDE by people who use it every day. The repository now hosts over 500 different plugins, which all together provide extremely comprehensive functionality complementing IntelliJ IDEA.

Describing all the winners selected by the contest jury, comprised of almost the entire IntelliJ IDEA development team, could take much longer than a single article. We would like to highlight the top two winners — Code Navigator by Frank Gerberding, Germany, and Code-Amnesia by Shmulik London, Israel.

Code Navigator is a great enhancement to IntelliJ IDEA code navigation with adjustable class clouds and UML diagrams — a true helper when you are exploring code, especially code that is new to you. Code-Amnesia analyzes the context you’re working in and finds suitable code snippets in its bottomless database, sparing you from the need to type tons of tedious code or memorizing syntax specifics for all the languages and frameworks you’re using.

Congratulations also to the five other contest runner-ups: Victor Iacoban, Canada (hg4idea), Guy Mahieu, Belgium (IvyIDEA), Robert F. Beeger, Germany (Osmorc), Sylvain François, France (reVu) and Siddique Hameed, USA (Script Monkey). A special prize, the Most Addictive Plugin, was also awarded this year to Code Consultant by Nathan Voxland, USA. Great job, everyone!

We thank everyone who participated. We hope to see you all again next year, and, of course, we’re looking forward to seeing newcomers, too!

For more information about the contest, its rules, prizes, etc. and, of course, for getting your hands on the latest and most delicious add-ons to your favorite IDE, visit our plugin repository. You can get all the contest plugins for free and also learn what it takes to write a decent plugin — the complete source code is also available.